Hacker News: Eextra953

New comment by Eextra953 in "I quit. The clankers won"

Eextra953 — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:05:33 +0000

I have a buddy who is a cop and he tells me that they use AI to write reports and even to check if their reason for pulling someone over will hold up later. As annoying as it is in SW, people using AI outside of SW is much more alarming.

New comment by Eextra953 in "Drone attack on parked U.S. Army BlackHawk in Iraq"

Eextra953 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:54:45 +0000

I think going low-tech and deploy netting around critical things would be the most effective. Sure they are a pain but they'll catch drones before they reach any targets.

New comment by Eextra953 in "The U.S. Government Just Followed Through on Its Ban of DJI Drones"

Eextra953 — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:56:16 +0000

I think you are correct about the political violence being higher in 20th century USA. For anyone doubting it, just look at the black experience in the south during the civil rights movements. Where I am concerned is that the violence we are seeing today from the federal authorities is being endorsed by the federal government. In fact all leadership is doubling down and turning up the rhetoric whereas during the 50's and 60's it was the federal government stepping in if things got out of hand. With what is happening today, who will step in to cool things down?

New comment by Eextra953 in "In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All"

Eextra953 — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 17:42:27 +0000

Yes, in the case of a business giving out free services or things. But, government is not and has never been a business so this doesn't apply in this case.

New comment by Eextra953 in "In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All"

Eextra953 — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 17:38:17 +0000

Across the US, the majority (2/3-ish) of children already live in families where both parents are employed. I don't see free childcare moving that statistic more than a few percentage points at best. I'm skeptical that this policy would encourage more parents to work and further raise housing costs, especially since this would mostly affect families with children who are pre-K. It is a big policy change but the number of families it will affect is quite small I think. If it does have any effect on housing cost I would expect to see it at the very low-end since it would help low-earners the most.

New comment by Eextra953 in "ICE and the Smartphone Panopticon"

Eextra953 — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 05:46:47 +0000

Using firearms against the state never works. However, the oppression isn't in the enforcement of laws it is in how those laws are being enforced, selectively, against brown and black people. Also, something being a law doesn't make it right or just. For examples of this just look at slavery, women's suffrage, civil rights, etc at a certain point in time all of those things were against the law but people agonized, organized and resisted enough to change the law. By your logic those groups weren't oppressed since the law allowed for their oppression.

New comment by Eextra953 in "Inside Palantir: Profits, Power and the Kill Machine"

Eextra953 — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 02:14:12 +0000

Your statement assumes that nations only use this technology against other nations but from the article it is clear that this technology is being used within nations to target people who disagree with the state. Tolerating those who think differently is a democratic value and hence using this technology against those who disagree with the state is anti-democratic. Treating political differences as security threats is exactly why this is a moral issue rather than an ideological one.

New comment by Eextra953 in "Imperial Tyranny, Korean Humiliation"

Eextra953 — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:34:43 +0000

On time.com article is titled: 'Nobody Is Going to Stay and Work When It’s Like This’: South Koreans Reluctant to Return After Harrowing ICE Detention'

New comment by Eextra953 in "Imperial Tyranny, Korean Humiliation"

Eextra953 — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:13:30 +0000

Clearly this is a huge deal for Korea, their news sites have been talking about it non-stop since it happened and they've zeroed in on the humiliation and treatment of their people. The workers arrested weren't just laborers they were skilled labor and engineers which is another point they keep coming to. I've seen stories point out how they were shackled and forced to lick water from plates. As a tech worker in manufacturing I know that the entire industry depends on cross-training and manufacturing with other countries, sending engineers to and from is everyday practice. If the administration keeps with their policies then manufacturing will be affected negatively.

New comment by Eextra953 in "America is in a serious jobs slump"

Eextra953 — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 21:14:10 +0000

Speaks to the disconnect between our representatives and the people they represent so many of these policies are extremely unpopular and yet they still get pushed through to terrible effect. I don't understand why 'we' can't hold them accountable. Is it due to lack of education in what is happening? A lack of understanding in our political system? Is the populate just completely disconnected?

New comment by Eextra953 in "Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission"

Eextra953 — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 05:07:57 +0000

This botched operation shows how representative government has been subverted in America. Power should flow bottom-up, rather than top-down. Would putting this operation to a democratic vote ever result in approval? Highly doubtful. This suggests our current form of democracy is deeply broken and urgently needs fixing. IMO the issue is how we think about power itself. The assumption underneath it all is that once we vote, power becomes fully vested in our elected officials rather than remaining with the people who conditionally granted it to them. The "representative" part of our democratic republic has become the hack that allows crappy politicians to take over and use power for their own benefit. We grant power through voting, but that power should stay accountable to us - not disappear into secret operations that would never survive public scrutiny.

New comment by Eextra953 in "I'm absolutely right"

Eextra953 — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 16:50:51 +0000

It would be nice if we can add another a plot to track when claude says "genuinely". It uses for almost all long responses, to the point that I can pretty much recognize when someone uses claude by looking for any instances of "genuinely".

New comment by Eextra953 in "AI startup Flock thinks it can eliminate all crime in America"

Eextra953 — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 17:35:59 +0000

No, not the ones with the highest crime but the poor/black/brown neighborhoods, at least in my city. I know, I live in a majority brown neighborhood and I've mapped the flock cameras in my city. There are more cameras in my neighborhood by about 3:1. To me this really shows the bias in my local PD because while there are pockets of high crime in my neighborhood, it is a huge neighborhood and the crime rate outside of those pockets is about the same as the rest of the city nevertheless, the cameras are not concentrated in the high-crime pockets but throughout the entire neighborhood.

New comment by Eextra953 in "I should have loved electrical engineering"

Eextra953 — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:18:00 +0000

I think the drop in tinkering is due to the high skill/cost barrier to entry particularly SMT, and lab equipment. If you want to do anything interesting beyond a breadboard and arduino/rpi you are going to need to invest in a custom pcb and lab equipment. With SMT, I got into EE/HW by taking things apart and studying them, back then (late 90's) most consumer stuff still had a good mix of thru-hole and SMT so tinkering was easy. Now almost nothing is thru-hole so if you want to fix or modify anything you are going to need more than a cheap harbor freight soldering iron.

New comment by Eextra953 in "I should have loved electrical engineering"

Eextra953 — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:06:41 +0000

I had the same experience, every EE class had a lab component even the intro ones. At my school, the labs for junior and senior classes were all scheduled 6PM to 10PM and almost all of them took that long or longer to complete.

New comment by Eextra953 in "When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire"

Eextra953 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 21:05:09 +0000

Thankful for what exactly?

New comment by Eextra953 in "New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely"

Eextra953 — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 14:15:54 +0000

No amount of good vibes, energy, or flow states are going to guarantee one lives to 100+.

New comment by Eextra953 in "Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread"

Eextra953 — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:15:08 +0000

So with pests and viruses there is no real eradication? Do they really require an unceasing war to reign them in? I have no knowledge of this field - just curious.

New comment by Eextra953 in "Mexico to US livestock trade halted due to screwworm spread"

Eextra953 — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:06:11 +0000

Any other predictions you saw/see coming? I feel like it would be useful to collect all of the predictions from people with domain knowledge and then build a website to track them all. Whether or not they happen, who knows, but being able to track them should be a big help in building a narrative of what is really happening vs media narratives that are hyper localized in time and often do a terrible job of explaining the long history of events.

New comment by Eextra953 in "Self-taught engineers often outperform (2024)"

Eextra953 — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:31:29 +0000

The article is specific to software engineers, and perhaps it's accurate within that discipline. The field is incredibly broad—ranging from writing small support scripts to engineering massive distributed systems—so it's plausible that a self-taught engineer could excel in certain areas. However, I don't believe this holds true, or is even feasible, for other engineering disciplines. In those fields, earning an engineering degree is typically a prerequisite. After that, you're free to self-teach and explore further, but without that formal foundation, it's difficult to progress meaningfully.

Side note: I think the term self-taught is often misused. Very few people are truly self-taught in the sense of starting from a blank slate and independently mastering a subject without any guidance. What the article refers to as self-taught is really just informal education—learning through blogs, tutorials, bootcamps, or YouTube University.